A few months ago I wrote about the Sonoff SC sensor hub by Itead Studio. It's a device with a Sharp GP2Y1010AU0F [Aliexpress] dust sensor, a DHT11 humidity and temperature sensor, an LDR as light sensor and a mic. The sensors are driven by an ATMega328P microcontroller but there is also an ESP8266 on board for WiFi communication, a pretty standard set up when you have several sensors and the ESP8266 GPIOs are just not enough....
Last December Itead Studio updated their Home Automation product line with a new and different product. The main difference is that it doesn't have a relay and it's mainly sensors and no actuator (if we don't define a notifying LED as an actuator). The Sonoff SC is a sensor station that packs a DHT11 temperature and humidity sensor, a GM55 LDR, an electret microphone with an amplifier circuit and a Sharp GP2Y1010AU0F [Aliexpress] dust sensor in a fancy case that looks like it was originally meant for a speaker....
Itead Studio keep on creating interesting products for the hacker community. A few weeks ago a new version of the already classic Sonoff TH came to life. This new version comes in two flavours: the Sonoff TH10 and TH16 and you can buy them at Aliexpress: Sonoff TH 10A/16A Temperature And Humidity Monitoring WiFi Smart Switch. In this article I will briefly talk about what's new in this device to quickly go to explore one of those novelties: it's external interface....
My MQTT network at home moves up and down a lot of messages: sensor values, triggers, notifications, device statuses,… I use Node-RED to forward the important ones to PushOver and some others to a Blynk application. But I also happen to have an LED display at home and that means FUN. LED displays are cool. Your team's score, your number in the IRS queue, the estimated arrival time for your next commute,… Now that TVs are replacing LED displays (like the later did with the electromechanical ones) they have acquire an almost vintage-status....
Have you ever forgotten your wet clothing inside the washer for a whole day? I have. Even for two days. They smell. You have to wash them again and you know you might end up forgetting about them again! Actually that is happening to me since me moved to an old house in a town north of Barcelona. Instead of having the washer in the kitchen, like we used to, now we have it in the cellar, in a place I don't normally pass by to notice the laundry is done....
The Rentalito is a never ending project. It began as a funny project at work using an Arduino UNO and an Ethernet Shield, then it got rid of some cables by using a Roving Networks RN-XV WIFI module, after that it supported MQTT by implementing Nick O’Leary’s PubSubClient library and now it leaves the well known Arduino hardware to embrace the powerful Spark Core board. Spark Core powered Rentalito - prototype Spark Core The Spark Core is a development board based on the STM32F103CB, an ARM 32-bit Cortex M3 microcontroller by ST Microelectronics, that integrates Texas Instruments CC3000 WIFI module....
Keeping on registering data from different sensors my next project has been the all-time favourite weather station. This time I wanted to build an 100% autonomous outdoor sensor. To achieve this goal I started playing with a LiPo battery and a solar panel. The Arduino Fio looked like the perfect out-of-the-box platform to be the center of the project. It's a ATmega328P (the same micro as the UNO), has a connection for a LiPo battery, a charge circuit based on the MAX1555 (with an USB connector) and a socket for an XBee radio module....
